Sophia Michaels
When Shooter Jennings saw his friend Brandi Carlile put together a tribute set to Joni Mitchell at this year’s Newport Folk Festival, it got the Grammy-winning producer thinking about, perhaps, organizing a similar project of his own.
“I got offered this festival, and I just didn’t want to have it be me coming in to play a regular set. I don’t have a [new] record,” Jennings tells Rolling Stone backstage at the inaugural Rebels & Renegades festival, held this weekend in Monterey, California. “So I was trying to think of something to do, to make something really special. Then my wife said, ‘Hey, why don’t you sing a bunch of that Warren Zevon stuff you’ve been listening to?’”
In a one-off showcase appearance, at least for the time being, Jennings and his backing band, dubbed the Werewolves of Los Angeles for this occasion, galloped through a set of classics from the late Zevon: “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” “Excitable Boy,” and, naturally, “Werewolves of London.” Jennings, who prefers to play keyboards these days (often as a touring member of Carlile’s band), moved to guitar for Zevon’s heartrending sign-off, “Keep Me in Your Heart,” before returning to keys for the tribute’s poignant ending, “Desperados Under the Eaves,” an ode to Zevon’s beloved Los Angeles. “Don’t the sun look angry through the trees/Don’t the trees look like crucified thieves/Don’t you feel like Desperados under the eaves/Heaven help the one who leaves,” sang Jennings, who’s called L.A. home for more than two decades.
“I was able to really find a lot of myself in him [when rehearsing these songs], which then I started to understand why I was so obsessed with L.A., Charles Bukowski, all of those characters,” Jennings says. “And [Zevon] is one of the characters.”
In its debut outing this past weekend, Rebels & Renegades curated an eclectic lineup, with the alt-bluegrass of Saturday’s headliner Trampled by Turtles juxtaposed with the outlaw country of Sunday’s Cody Jinks. Hard-to-pigeonhole acts like the Cadillac Three, Nikki Lane, Sierra Hull, Houndmouth, Shane Smith & The Saints, and Kat Hasty — not to mention Jennings — were also on the bill.
“We wanted to do a festival that represented what we’re listening to,” says Rebels & Renegades promoter Dan Shehan, who’s also behind the California Roots Music & Arts Festival. “And there’s really nothing like this particular style of festival, mixing in all these genres in such an intimate setting.”
Held on the Monterey County Fairgrounds, just on the outskirts of the picturesque coastal community, the property is hallowed ground in the annals of music history. The Monterey Pop Festival, where Jimi Hendrix burned his guitar and the world first laid eyes on Janis Joplin, was held there in 1967.
In a surprise to those arriving onsite, the original Monterey Pop stage and outdoor bleachers are still standing within earshot of the Rebels & Renegades performance areas. Plans are in the works to incorporate the stage into future Rebels & Renegades installments. But in the meantime, Amigo The Devil is just wandering the decades-old platform.
The Austin singer-songwriter is searching for the exact spot where Hendrix infamously torched his instrument. “I always ask myself, ‘Were these moments actually that insane and special to everyone then as it is now? Or did it grow to be that special because it was captured on film and shared over time?’” Amigo asks. “But then you get here, and you stand here, and you can feel it.”
Cody Jinks not only feels the vibes of Monterey, he fully embraces the new festival’s erasure of genres. The Texas singer takes a simplistic approach when it comes to classification. “I’m one of those people that’s always thought there’s two kinds of music — good and bad. There’s good songs and there’s bad songs. There’s no grey matter there,” he says. “And, the fact of the matter is, there’s always been crosspollination of music since music started. And there’s going to continue to be.”
Backstage Saturday following his rollicking set of operatic western songs, Orville Peck ponders the idea of what it means to be a performer in a modern era of country music where the gate can seem wide open for some artists but barely cracked open for others.
“There are a lot of walls to still bust down. Women are playing at a 1-to-13 ratio on the radio. There’s very little visibility for people of color, LGBTQ people,” he says. “I’m just trying to be myself, telling my stories as a gay man. It’s approaching [my music] with sincerity and authenticity — if that helps break down walls and barriers, then that’s great.”
Following their first-day afternoon set on the Big Sur Stage, the blues-inspired band Houndmouth echoed Peck’s take on musical rules. “You try to bend them,” says singer-guitarist Matt Myers, underscoring the mix-it-all-up theme of Rebels & Renegades. He posits that music is in a very liberating phase, where genres are all but gone and neither fans nor promoters make a fuss about categories. “We’re an ‘indie band’ from Indiana,” he says, “at an Americana/country festival in California.”
Shehan says it all hearkens back to Monterey Pop. “That was a group of performers who were going against the grain at the time,” he says, “and what we want to create here is that same vision.”
And Rebels & Renegades will return: the festival will expand to three days (Oct. 6 through 8) in 2023.
